KNOX — John C. Kolanchick was, his son Gary said, like a combination of Peter Pan and Warren Buffett.

Mr. Kolanchick and his wife raised six sons, and he enjoyed boyish adventures with them. At the same time, he worked the job of his dreams, selling Mack trucks and building up a network of buddies who collected old Army vehicles.

“He always knew the deal; he was a great salesman,” said his son, Dr. Gary Kolanchick. “He always had this boyish part, too, which came out in his truck collecting.”

He died peacefully on Monday, Sept. 10, 2018. He was 94.

He was born June 22, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois to William Kolanchick, who worked for the telephone company, and Leona Kolanchick, a homemaker. He had a suburban childhood in Lagrange Park.

“He hung out with a group like the Little Rascals … He did all the things boys do,” said Dr. Kolanchick, sharing one story from his father’s youth. When the road was being paved, he picked up asphalt and put it in his pocket; his mother had to cut the pocket from his pants.

When World War II broke out, Mr. Kolanchick lied about his age and joined the Navy. “He had the same fervor a lot of guys did,” said his son. He joined shortly after Pearl Harbor was attacked, at the age of 17.

Mr. Kolanchick was originally stationed on a 1919 submarine, from World War I, that had been mothballed in Canada. He worked his way up through the ranks to be quartermaster on a training submarine in the Atlantic.

He completed college after the war at Michigan State, earning a degree in forestry. It was there that he met his future wife, Eldalene Crawford. “She was in the nursing program, a country girl, looking for a city boy,” said Dr. Kolanchick.

But she ended up in the backwoods of Maine. In the early 1950s, the recession limited jobs in forestry so the young family moved to Greenville, Maine where Mr. Kolanchick worked as a lumberjack.

“My older brother was one-and-a-half, and I was a babe in arms. My father was in a logging camp and we were in an apartment. We lived on fish and tomatoes,” said Dr. Kolanchick.

Things worsened financially and, in the process of moving back to Michigan, his first of many ’42 Dodge Army trucks broke down in Albany. Mr. Kolanchick befriended “Ben” who had a small garage at what is now the intersection of routes 20 and 155.

While working on the truck, Mr. Kolanchick answered an ad for a truck salesman at International Harvester, got the job, and moved the family to Ketchum Road in Knox. His childhood diary listed a goal of having a small farm and in 1960 the family moved to Point View Farm on Route 156 in Knox.

The beautiful Victorian house had lingered on the market, Dr. Kolanchick said, because it had no bathroom. He was in the second grade when his family moved in. “That first winter, we had an outhouse,” he recalled.

“My parents bought it — lock, stock, and barrel. It came with china on the table, linens on the beds, and farm machinery in the barn,” said Dr. Kolanchick, adding that, with six boys, much of the finery was short-lived.

Mr. Kolanchick sold Trailmobile trailers after International Harvester, and then landed his dream job selling Mack trucks, where he stayed until retirement in the mid 1990s.

“He specialized in fire trucks and cement mixers,” said his son. “”He knew every fire chief around … There were always stories at the dinner table.”

His family grew to six sons and he became the local Boy Scoutmaster of Troop 79. He prided himself in leading the troop on adventures, including winter camping and a small-boat trip down the Hudson River through New York Harbor to the Statue of Liberty.

“His child fantasies came true with the trips he’d take us on,” said Dr. Kolanchick. He recalled being in a small boat on the Hudson, next to big oil tankers, and maneuvering through New York Harbor on a busy weekday.

“We literally went onto the rocks at the Statue of Liberty and climbed over the fence with our Scout uniforms on,” he recalled. After Mr. Kolanchick and his Scouts enjoyed the view from Liberty’s crown, they went back down, climbed back over the fence, and into their boats, he said.

Through the years, Mr. Kolanchick exercised his passion for restoring World War II Army vehicles including many trucks, a duck, Weasel track vehicles, and at one time, even an armed half track. He was featured on the Fox network series “Super Collectors.”

He was an avid member of the NY-Penn Military Vehicles Collectors’ Club..

“For every vehicle he had, he had three more for parts,” his son said. And he was always searching for more.

“We’d take a Sunday ride out in God’s half-acre,” his son recalled, “and he’d point to a fender behind a barn — with the vehicle covered in vines.” Mr. Kolanchick would speak to the owner. “They’d whack off the weeds and find a new treasure,” said Dr. Kolanchick, surmising that his father had known all along that the treasure was there. “He’d buy us off with ice cream,” he concluded.

For the 50th anniversary of the Alaska-Canadian Highway, built across Canada during World War II to connect Alaska with the contiguous United States, organizers were looking for vehicles of the era, and Mr. Kolanchick was part of the celebration.

“He took his then-only grandchild, who was 9, and set off in one of his ’42 Army trucks, and camped across America on his way to Alaska,” his son said. He met fellow collectors along the way and they became a convoy for the 50th-anniversary celebration.

Mr. Kolanchick maintained friendships with his military-collector buddies throughout his long life.

When he sold his Knox farm in 2004, his collection was sold, too, with pieces of it going all over the country.

“At the end, it saved his life,” said Dr. Kolanchick of his father’s collector buddies.

The friend who picked him up to go to a collectors’ club meeting in 2013 happened to be an emergency-room physician and he noticed stroke symptoms. Mr. Kolanchick tried to waive off his friends concerns; he wanted to go to the meeting.

His friend insisted and called Dr. Kolanchick. “He made almost a full recovery,” said his son.

“After the stroke, the guys would take him on bivouacs. They would set him up in a chair. He was like Yoda,” said Dr. Kolanchick. Club members would gather around him to get various mechanical problems solved.

Mr. Kolanchick spent his last two years in Maine, where his son had moved. Even when he was in hospice care, Dr. Kolanchick said, “He looked out at a construction site, and would see who was working, who was loafing, and how many Mack trucks there were.”

Dr. Kolanchick concluded that, while he got his interest in medicine from his mother, his father taught him this: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. You stick with it. And it’s not what you know that matters. It’s who you know — you’ll find someone to help you out.”

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John C. Kolanchick is survived by his sons, Paul Kolanchick of Knox; Mark Kolanchick of Knox; and Gary Kolanchick and his husband Patrick Golden of Kittery, Maine, as well as five grandchildren.

His wife, Eldalene Crawford, died before him, as did his sister, Naomi Kolanchick, and his three sons, Johnny Kolanchick, Brian Kolanchick, and Peter Kolanchick.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Knox Volunteer Fire Department whose Auxiliary will host his memorial gathering at the firehouse Saturday, Sept. 29, from 5 to 7 p.m.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer